Work Sport and Recreation Victoria
Sport and Recreation Victoria · Sport and recreationA funding front door for Victorian sport
Sport and Recreation Victoria funds the facilities, programs and people behind community sport across the state. Its website is where a club finds a grant, checks whether it is open and applies. In 2023 Ladoo researched what the old site got wrong, then designed and built a new one on Squiz Matrix in the refreshed brand, migrated the content and handed the team a publishing guide. It went live in mid 2024.
- Grants as structured records that open and close themselves on the day
- Pages migrated in two weeks in the order the content was ready, against a shared tracking sheet
- WCAG 2.2 AA on every template, with a publishing guide for every component
Find out what is wrong first, then build
The Department did this in the right order. In May 2023 it commissioned a four-week digital research project: find the pain points and gaps in the current site, map the best paths for the people who use it, especially grant recipients, draft a high-level information architecture, and advise on how microsites and external platforms such as the grants portal should fit in. Ladoo did the research: background reading, a review of the current site against usability heuristics, a look at peer sites in other states, an analytics review, workshops and interviews, and a draft architecture.
The website brief followed in August 2023: a new site on Squiz Matrix in the Department’s environment, in the refreshed brand, to WCAG 2.2 AA, with templates for the home page, landing pages, content, news and search, the migration of around seventy pages and a hundred and twenty news items, two rounds of acceptance testing over six weeks, training for the authors and a user manual. Ladoo won it on the strength of the research it had just done.
Looking for a grant, on a deadline
A club secretary, a council officer, a state sporting association. They want to know what funding exists, whether it is open, what it pays and when it closes, and then to get to the application without a tour of the Department.
- Every grant with its status, dates and amount up front
- A funding list that filters by status as you type
- Apply buttons that only appear while a grant is open
Publishing news, stories and resources
A small communications team that announces funding rounds, publishes success stories from across the state, and keeps a library of guidelines and policies current. They needed templates they could trust and a guide they could look things up in.
- News and success stories that list themselves by date and tag
- Resources filtered by topic from a single metadata field
- A publishing guide for every component on the site
Organised the way the sector looks for things
The research turned a departmental structure into seven plain sections: funding, participation, our sector, facilities, success stories, news and resources. Pick one to see it as it is today.
Pick a section. It cycles on its own until you do.
What a grant page has to carry
Each grant is a structured record, not a page of prose. The author fills in the fields and the page, the funding list and the funding cards elsewhere on the site all draw from them. This is the Get Active Kids Voucher Program.
12345- 1
The name, and the amount
What the grant pays sits in the highlighted box at the top, as a single amount or a range, because that is the first thing a club wants to know.
- 2
Opening and closing dates
Entered once, to the minute. They drive the status, the order of the funding list and whether the apply buttons show.
- 3
Latest grants, alongside
A side list of other open grants, generated from the same records, so a visitor who came for one program sees the others.
- 4
About the program, what you get, the round dates
The author’s copy, in the content templates, with the guidelines attached as documents that show their file type and size.
- 5
Apply, and come back to a saved application
Two buttons with their own labels and links. They appear only while the grant is open or ongoing, and disappear on the closing date without anyone touching the page.
Grants that open and close themselves
A grant goes live as opening soon. On its opening date a trigger in Squiz Matrix sets it to open, or to ongoing if it has no closing date. On its closing date another trigger closes it. The funding list reorders, the status changes and the apply buttons come and go, all without an author logging in at midnight. Drag the year.
Today: 1 Jan
Community Sport Equipment Grant
Thinking about something similar? Nathan reads every message and replies within a business day.Talk to Ladoo
Two weeks, in the order the content was ready
The migration order was set by content readiness, not by the site map, so the SRV team had time to finish the sections that needed rewriting while the ready ones moved. News went first, migrated to the end of February with the latest items added just before launch. Success stories and facilities went last, because most of that content was still being written.
One sheet per section
Every page with its old URL, its new URL, who owns it, whether it needs review and who reviews it by when. The Department could see where every page stood.
Junk code left behind
Pages carried markup from a Drupal site before Matrix. Each one was cleaned on the way across so the new templates and the accessibility checks held.
Two rounds over six weeks
Acceptance testing section by section, with problems and their fixes logged against each page, and the SRV team supplying the content that did not yet exist.
A checklist the Department could follow
Test content removed. URLs and remaps confirmed. Metadata in place and permissions set. Search re-crawled, with sitemap and robots files. The repository handed to the Department’s own source control.
Every component, written down
The brief asked for a user manual. Ladoo wrote a publishing guide that walks an author through every option on the site, from the two page templates to the newsletter block, with the fields each one takes and what the site does with them.
Search needs nothing from authors: its filters follow the site structure, so a news tab shows what sits under News. Images caption themselves from their title field. News archives itself a year after publication unless an author decides otherwise.
Research, build, and the site next door
Digital research
Four weeks: a current-state review, peer sites in other states, analytics, workshops and interviews, and a draft architecture, delivered as a report with recommendations.
The website proposal
A twenty-two week programme on Squiz Matrix: consultation and ideation, design and definition, development, content migration, six weeks of acceptance testing, then training and go-live.
Migration and testing
Seven sections moved in readiness order against a shared tracking sheet, then two rounds of acceptance testing with the SRV team.
Go-live
The go-live checklist worked through with the Department’s online services team, and the publishing guide and training handed over.
Change Our Game, next door
Ladoo also rebuilt Change Our Game, the Office for Women in Sport and Recreation’s campaign site, as a separate project that year. It has since been folded into sport.vic.gov.au as the women and girls in sport section.
Six layers, one team
Every public website is a stack. These are the layers Ladoo researched, designed and built for Sport and Recreation Victoria, from the funding list a club lands on to the trigger that closes a grant at midnight.
From the funding list a club lands on to the trigger that closes a grant at midnight.Researched, designed and built by one Ladoo team on Squiz Matrix
- InterfaceResponsive templates for the home page, landing pages, content, news and search, in the refreshed brand
- ContentGrants as structured records: dates, status, amount, guidelines and two application buttons
- AutomationTriggers that open and close grants on the day, and archive news a year after it is published
- ListingsNews, success stories and resources driven by where a page sits and how it is tagged
- AuthoringA publishing guide for every component, and training for the team that uses it
- AccessibilityWCAG 2.2 AA, with transcripts on video and alt text required on every image
Twenty-two weeks, research first
Consultation and ideation
The research findings carried into the project: pain points, the paths grant recipients take, the draft architecture, and consultation with the SRV team on what the new site had to do.
Design and definition
The information architecture validated, wireframes, then visual design in the refreshed brand for the home page, landing pages, content pages, news and search, with the grant record designed as structured fields.
Development and migration
Responsive templates and components in Squiz Matrix 6, the funding triggers, listings and search, then the two-week migration in readiness order.
Testing, training and go-live
Two rounds of acceptance testing over six weeks, a training session for the authors, the publishing guide, and go-live through a checklist shared with the Department.
The questions we get asked about this project
Why research before the build?
Because the Department wanted to know what was wrong before paying to fix it. Four weeks of research gave the build a tested architecture and a list of problems to solve, and it cost a fraction of getting the structure wrong.
Who closes a grant on the day?
Nobody. The closing date on the grant record does it, through a trigger in Squiz Matrix. The same goes for opening, and for archiving news a year on. Authors can override any of it.
What about Change Our Game?
A separate site for the Office for Women in Sport and Recreation, which Ladoo rebuilt in 2024 on the same platform. It has since been merged into sport.vic.gov.au, so one site now carries both.
Would this work for us?
If your organisation runs grants, programs or rounds with dates attached, and your site has to tell people what is open today without someone watching the calendar, this is the shape. Talk to Nathan and he will tell you honestly.
- Client
- Sport and Recreation Victoria, Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions
- Site
- sport.vic.gov.au
- Sector
- Sport and recreation
- Platform
- Squiz Matrix
- What we did
Ladoo ran the research, designed the structure and the interface, built the site in the Department’s Squiz Matrix environment and migrated the content. Sport and Recreation Victoria owns and publishes the content.
What shipped
- A four-week digital research project that set the architecture before the build
- A new sport.vic.gov.au on Squiz Matrix in the refreshed brand, to WCAG 2.2 AA
- Grants as structured records with triggers that open and close them on the day
- News, success stories and resources as listings driven by structure and tags
- 185 pages and articles migrated in two weeks, in readiness order, against a shared tracking sheet
- A publishing guide for every component, training for the authors and a go-live checklist for the Department
Talk to Nathan about your site.
Nathan runs Ladoo and reads every message himself. Tell him what the site has to do and what is in the way, and within a business day he will tell you what he would do first and whether we are the right fit.